OpenMedia will protect your privacy, and keep you informed about this campaign and others. Find OpenMedia's privacy policy here.

people have spoken out (and counting).

Right now an international agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Peru, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. The changes to copyright required by the TPP would reduce our access to information and restrict our ability to innovate, both on and offline.

Changing our copyright laws in ways that restrict the open Internet and economic opportunity are unfair to citizens, businesses, creators, and civil society organizations. Not only could such changes raise prices for users of copyright works, but they could also stifle our knowledge economy and chill innovation.

The TPP negotiations are secret,

so nobody can say for sure how you will lose or gain from the agreement, but a leaked document reveals that the U.S. wants copyright standards that would force change to many of the negotiating countries’ copyright laws. We want you to know more about what’s at stake so that you can have a say now, before the deal is done.

The TPP is no simple “trade agreement.” It goes further than tariffs and quotas. The TPP will reach beyond the border, into countries’ own policy-making and regulatory processes. For example, the TPP could stop future governments from making their own decisions on important issues including how long copyright lasts and how Internet service providers do business.

Support a Fair Deal for Citizens

Keep parallel imports

The TPP could give copyright holders the power to veto parallel imports. This would drive up the already high price of books, DVDs, and other items in several countries.

Don’t extend our copyright terms

The TPP could make copyright longer in most of the affected countries. Accepted standards for copyright terms are set out in international law. Under the TRIPS Agreement, copyright in books, for example, lasts for the life of the author plus 50 years after death.The TPP could add another 20 years to that, making copyright last the author’s life plus 70 years. Not only would citizens have to pay an extra 20 years in royalties, but several generations will go by before the book enters the public domain.

Keep us free from restrictive digital locks

A Technological Protection Measure (TPM) or digital lock is software designed to prevent people from copying digital products. But TPMs do more than that – they can prevent us from engaging in entirely legal activities. The TPP could expand digital locks and make it illegal to circumvent them even for non-infringing purposes – like changing an e-book into a format someone who is blind or has low vision could read. The TPP could effectively make it illegal for the blind to access e-books where digital locks are attached, even if they've purchased the e-book lawfully!

Support a Fair Deal for Innovators

Copyright law is meant to encourage people to create, but too strong copyright law can actually stifle innovation. This is especially true in the digital environment. As explained in a leaked text by New Zealand negotiators:

Many innovations are occurring in a rapid and sequential manner either through the clustering of innovation or by one innovator moving to quickly build on the work of another...In this environment, more people are arguing that overly strong rights can act as an inhibitor rather than as promoter of innovation.

Support a Fair Deal for our Internet

Keep our Internet open

The TPP could give copyright owners power over temporary electronic copies, for example cached, buffered or streamed data. The glaring problem is this: the Internet fundamentally depends on making temporary copies to move information from point A to point B, so the TPP’s “temporary electronic copy” right is like giving copyright owners the power to set up toll booths all along the information superhighway. This would seriously take away from the openness that makes the Internet so valuable.

Let ISPs do what they do best – provide Internet access, not police copyright

The TPP could force ISPs to be judge and jury when it comes to copyright infringement, making them—not a court—determine who “repeat infringers” of copyright are and cut them off from the Internet.

OpenMedia will protect your privacy, and keep you informed about this campaign and others. Find OpenMedia's privacy policy here.

22,251 people have spoken out (and counting).

About Us

Starting at first in New Zealand and then connecting with organizations and people internationally, a group of individuals from the fields of Internet policy, art, information technology and law got together to discuss a TPP campaign with a copyright focus. What resulted was the idea of a fair deal, one that opens up trade opportunities for TPP member states but doesn’t force copyright and other IP-related changes on us that could damage our future. If you represent an organization that would like to join the Fair Deal coalition fill in the form here.